ex astris, scientia
by fairy-prose
Summary: "Well then, Rose Tyler." He skips the 'Lieutenant' altogether, which is improper and ought to be annoying, but Rose can't find it in her to care, because the weight he puts on her name makes it sound so much more important than any rank designation ever could. (Star Trek fusion).
1. Chapter 1

Rose isn't sure what she's expecting from her first assignment.

She's been too busy to think about it, honestly. Between the concentrated madness that is end-of-year exams and the slow-burning stress of prepping for her interstellar navigation certification test, she's barely had time to eat and sleep lately, let alone fret about where Starfleet will post her after graduation.

But that's all over and done now, and she's _nailed_ it, well done her. High honors in astrophysics and probability mechanics, plus an interstellar navigation certification. The petty side of her wants to gather up all her diplomas and honors and shove them in the face of everyone who's ever implied (or said right out) that she wasn't good enough or smart enough or posh enough to get anywhere in life – because she _is_ and she _has_ and they can all just go to hell.

The other side of her just wants to jump for joy and squeal like a little girl, but her mum's done enough of that for the both of them, cheering (obnoxiously) all throughout the (ordinarily quite somber and dignified) Academy graduation ceremony.

Right now, though, she's too paralyzed with anticipation to do any of those things. It's a misty San Francisco morning, cold and wet and smelling of salt water, but she feels hot and on edge, standing on the lawn outside the Academy in her high-necked dress uniform, looking down at the datapad that has her first assignment on it. All she has to do is turn it on and look.

Again, she isn't sure what she's expecting. Rose doesn't like to think that she's full of herself, but she's _good._ She _knows_ she's good – the diplomas and certifications are just validation, proof for everyone else. High honors and the navigation certificate and enough recommendations from professors to track her into command school, if she wanted to go, ought to be enough to ensure a good posting. If Rose allows herself to dream, she thinks she might want something like the _USS Bannerman,_ or the _Torchwood_ – smallish ships, not massive four- or five-hundred man heavy cruisers, but they do always seem to be doing something exciting.

(Deep down, in her heart of hearts, all she really wants is a ship with an open helmsman's chair and a captain she can convince to put her there).

All that said, when she finally clicks on the datapad and opens her assignment, it's a little bit of a shock.

She's never even _heard_ of the _USS TARDIS._

* * *

"So. _USS TARDIS._ Harmony-class, crew complement of 125, five-year deep space survey mission."

The first officer of the _TARDIS_ is quite possibly the loudest Starfleet officer Rose has ever met. She's human, maybe a decade or so older than Rose herself, with red hair and a slightly snappish manner that seems to send ensigns scrambling every which way with _yes ma'am, right away ma'am_ every time she gives an order.

"You in there, Lieutenant?" Rose snaps her eyes back to Commander Noble, who's paused the running introduction to the ship in order to give her a quizzical look. It makes Rose feel a little like she's just dribbled on her shirt.

She composes herself enough to choke out a "Yes – sorry, ma'am." It sounds nervous, instead of confident, and she kicks herself, because she is a _professional_ and this shouldn't be hard. It's what she's studied for, trained for, dreamed about since she was younger than she'll ever admit out loud. It's all hitting at once, though – that this is where she's posted, and it's where she's going to stay for the next five years.

It's _big_ and it's thrilling and really quite inherently dangerous, and she ought to be scared, but she _isn't,_ and _that's_ a little bit scary.

The commander's expression softens and she just…smiles at her. Rose finds herself having to revise her earlier opinion of her. Not snappish, maybe – just _in charge._

"No worries, Lieutenant. I remember my first assignment. It can be a bit overwhelming." She smiles again, more broadly this time, and waves Rose on, out of the loading bay and into the ship's inner corridors.

Rose has been on lots of ships. Heavy crusiers and frigates, transport ships and hospital ships, interceptors and shuttles and tiny little science vessels. Not all of them were Starfleet ships, of course. The little shuttle that made her fall in love with ships, all those years ago, was an absolute junker of a thing. It couldn't even fly, though her mum swore it could once, back when it'd been her dad's. Mostly it just sat there, looking lonely and sad out in the alley off the estate courtyard, a relic left behind when the universe cut Pete Tyler's life short. Rose spent ages chasing other kids away from it, cleaning graffiti off the broken windows and trying to make sure nobody nicked it for parts.

Eventually, she got too big to crawl inside the twisted shell of the shuttle, too old to play pilot and pretend the alley was a shipyard, or that the stars beyond the grey London sky were something she could reach.

That's when she applied to the Academy.

None of the ships she's been on, though, ever looked quite like this.

The _TARDIS_ is no fresh-off-the-line, pride-of-the-fleet cruiser, streamlined and shining. There are no pristine white walls and rounded curves here, though there's plenty of lovingly polished metal. Everything looks a bit patched together, honestly, as though Engineering doesn't have access to all the parts and resources they need (though Rose is familiar with the ship's mandate and service history, and she knows that they do). It's an old ship, and the age shows, though not in any ways that make her feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

The commander doesn't stop talking as she leads Rose through the corridors and towards the turbolift – which gets stuck, for a few seconds, between Deck Nine and Deck Ten, making Rose wonder if she ought to feel a little unsafe after all – chattering amiably about the layout of the ship, and the makeup of the senior staff, and which deck her quarters will be on. Rose is only half-listening, too busy drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the ship, because you're only ever somewhere for the first time once, and she wants to remember this.

* * *

The last stop before Commander Noble releases her to report to duty is the bridge.

Like the rest of the ship, the bridge shows its age. It doesn't look anything like what she's seen on newer Starfleet vessels – or on any Starfleet vessel, really. The walls look dull, the way metal does when it gets old, and there are patterns worn into the floor from long use. There are odd little roundels set into the walls, too, shining unnaturally in the warm light. She can't tell if they have a function or if they're just an odd design choice.

It's strange and wonderful and nothing like she expected, and Rose loves it, with a fierceness that surprises her.

(And the helmsman's chair is there – _right there_ – and she wants to slide into it so badly she can taste it. The fact that her first duty shift isn't on the bridge is a stinging disappointment).

Commander Noble briefly introduces her to the bridge officers on duty, and there are far too many names and faces all at once for Rose to remember them all, though everyone seems friendly enough. Then there's the soft _shhhh_ of the turbolift opening behind them, and a tall, thin, sort of gangly-looking man in command gold saunters onto the bridge.

The commander huffs and rolls her eyes. "There you are, spaceman. We're only ten minutes from launch. You ought to have had your arse in that chair half an hour ago." She gestures towards the captain's chair.

Rose blinks in surprise, because that means – this must be the captain.

There's no picture of the _TARDIS'_ captain in its official Starfleet file. In fact, his profile is the barest one she's ever seen. All that's listed there is a name (John Smith) a service record (distinguished) and his various degrees and certifications (many). The man himself seems fairly young, maybe mid-thirties, with messy brown hair and a wide grin plastered on his thin face.

Despite the fact that his first officer is talking to him as though he's a particularly willful child, the captain is all smiles; in fact, he's apparently not paying her any mind at all, because he's looking right past the commander and at – Rose.

Commander Noble notices, and rolls her eyes again. "Right." She gestures at Rose. "Your newest crewmember. Lieutenant, this is Captain–"

"Oh, come off it, Donna. Let's not give her the impression that there's _formality_ on this ship." The captain flashes Rose a brilliant smile. She absolutely does not go weak at the knees. "It's not Captain. I mean, I am the captain, but I'm the Doctor. Not the ship's doctor, the ship's captain. But I'm the Doctor. You can call me the Doctor, I mean. And you are?"

Rose blinks again, a little thrown off-guard by the captain's – the Doctor's – onslaught of excitable rambling. She does, however, manage to get out an introduction.

"Lieutenant Tyler, sir. Rose Tyler."

"Well then, Rose Tyler." He skips the 'Lieutenant' altogether, which is improper and ought to be annoying, but Rose can't find it in her to care, because the weight he puts on her name makes it sound so much more important than any rank designation ever could. "Welcome aboard."


	2. Chapter 2

At the Academy, there's a saying — a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing, one of those too-often-repeated bits of conventional wisdom that's long overstayed its welcome but never seems to go away. Senior students repeat it to incoming cadets constantly, during first-year orientation. Professors work it into their intro lectures and joke unsubtly about in their syllabi. The Academy uses it, completely seriously, in their official recruitment literature.

They say that your first duty shift, on your first assignment, sets the tone for the rest of your Starfleet career.

If that's true, Rose isn't sure she's going to survive long enough to _have_ a career.

* * *

About four hours into her first duty shift, Rose is pulled away from the task of plotting a complex and frustrating astrogation chart with an order from the bridge — _report to the hangar bay, Lieutenant Tyler._ She's almost glad for an excuse to leave the tedious, if necessary, task behind, though she's also got no idea what the hangar staff could possibly need a brand-new ops lieutenant for.

Rose runs through half a dozen possibilities on the turbolift ride down to Deck Fifteen. None of them, however, account for the presence of the captain.

When she walks into the hangar bay he's standing next to one of the shuttles, hands shoved in his pockets as he rocks back and forth on his heels. There's a small group of ensigns milling around him, apparently prepping the shuttle for something, but the Doctor doesn't appear to be helping. He's just standing there, looking at the corridor she's just come out of and grinning like an absolute loon.

He greets Rose with a bright "Hello!" as she makes her way over, pulling a hand from his pocket to wave in her general direction. "Glad you could make it."

The Doctor says it with real enthusiasm, real excitement — as though Rose had a choice, like she's graciously accepted an invitation rather than simply followed an order. It's sort of charming.

"Cap—" She stops, already halfway through the reflexive acknowledgment of rank, when he frowns. "—er, _Doctor._ Commander Noble said I'd need to report to the hangar bay? Didn't say why."

"Ah!" Again, the Doctor frowns slightly, though Rose has a feeling that this time the expression isn't directed at her. "I might've known that she wouldn't. Well then, Rose Tyler, allow me to welcome you to the first away team of this mission."

Rose starts a little, surprised. She's got a feeling that's going to be a regular occurrence over the next few years. "Away team? Where to?" She shoots the captain a questioning look. "We're barely four hours out of dock. What's there to see?"

The Doctor waves her over to a nearby console, and brings up what seems to be basic telemetry for an M-class planet. "A fascinating little world, that's what. We've picked up traces of some very interesting and complex organic compounds on one of the northernmost continents. Metallurgical scans also reveal high concentrations of quite a few minerals that are exceedingly rare on Earth." He looks up from the console and glances over at her, eyes dancing with excitement. "Plus, I hear the sunsets are _brilliant._"

"And we're here to survey sunsets, are we?" Rose can't help the teasing lilt that creeps into her voice, or the way her lips quirk up at the edges. She's pleased to see the answering gleam in his eyes, the corresponding tug of amusement at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't think those rated very high on the Starfleet priority list."

"We-_eeell_, not strictly speaking, no. But those are the most important bits, I think. The things you aren't looking for." He turns another blinding grin towards her. "That's what _I'm_ out here for, anyhow."

Rose can't help smiling back. His enthusiasm is contagious, and she's really all too happy to be infected with it. She imagines they must look ridiculous, standing there bent over a console, grinning dumbly at each other like absolute nutters. She doesn't give a toss.

The sound of a throat being cleared uncomfortably breaks the spell of the moment. Rose tears her eyes from the Doctor's and whips around. Standing behind them is a young, sandy-haired man in a blue science uniform, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and fiddling with the strap of the supply bag slung over his shoulder.

The Doctor makes a face — something like a scowl, but infinitely less harsh — when he sees the new arrival. "Oh, what are _you_ doing here?" he asks petulantly. "I asked for Martha. Where's Martha?"

The young man shifts again and lets go of the shoulder strap to fiddle with his hands, as though he's not sure what to do with them. "She, er, wanted me to tell you that we're only four hours out of spacedock, and she's got a medbay to outfit and exams to conduct and she hasn't got time to enable you while you hop off to the first uncharted M-class planet you can find." He pauses, then adds, almost as an afterthought, "Sir."

The Doctor scowls — properly, this time — and Rose has to suppress a laugh. "Fine." he sniffs. "Right then. Rose, this is Rory. Rory, Rose. Let's get down to the planet now, eh?" He closes the telemetry report on the console, then turns and heads back towards the shuttle.

The man whose name is apparently Rory extends a hand for Rose to shake. "You're Lieutenant Tyler, right?" Rose nods, and accepts the firm handshake. "I'm Ensign Williams, from Medical. Or, you know, Rory. If you hadn't noticed, we're not much for ranks and titles on the _TARDIS._"

"I'd noticed, yeah." Rose says wryly. "I don't mind." She really doesn't. It's not what she expected, for sure, but the lack of formality on the _TARDIS_ is mostly just…comfortable. She's only been on the ship a few hours, but from what she can tell nobody actually breaks protocol, or blatantly disregards the chain of command. It's not even that everyone skips over rank and proper address entirely, because not everyone does. There's just an _easy_ sensibility to the whole ship — like seniority and station aren't things they really _need_ in order to know who's the best at what, or who should go where and when, or who ought (or ought not) to be listened to.

Rory nods, and drops her hand. "Right. Just Rose, then?"

"That'll do fine, yeah."

"Oi!" Rose turns around to see the Doctor hanging out of the shuttle door, one hand clutching the frame, body half inside the ship and half out. "What're you lot waiting for? There's a planet to see!"

* * *

The planet they're surveying is, according to preliminary readings, home to a pre-spaceflight culture. Rose is fairly certain this means they ought to be using transporters to get to the surface — even with the shuttle cloaked, they still run the risk of someone catching a glimpse of them, either in the sky or on the ground — but the Doctor insists that wouldn't be nearly as much _fun._

Rose has a sneaking suspicion that the Doctor uses this reasoning to justify a lot of things. She feels a pang of sympathy for Commander Noble.

They're en route to the planet's surface now, and the Doctor and Rory are bickering over something or other in the open area behind the pilot's console, but Rose isn't listening. She's much too busy _flying._

It isn't the helmsman's seat on the bridge, but it'll do for now. The feel of the smooth console beneath her hands is as familiar as her own heartbeat, and just as steadying. It's not difficult, guiding the shuttle up and out of the hangar bay, down towards the planet and through the atmosphere, but Rose allows herself to take a little more time doing it than is strictly necessary — just enjoying herself, and the experience.

Once they've passed through the atmosphere, though, the task of piloting is increasingly mundane. Rose is setting course for the coordinates they're meant to explore when the Doctor settles into the co-pilot's seat next to her. Briefly, she looks up and away from the console to meet his eyes, and finds them studying her with interest.

"Some pretty nice flying there." The Doctor's voice is appreciative.

She shrugs, and goes back to adjusting their course to account for weather patterns and wind speed. "Just basic shuttle piloting. 'S not anything special."

"Oh, but you _are_ something special."

Rose hazards another glance at him. From anyone else, she'd have sworn that was a come-on. Coming from the Doctor, it sounds sincere — and the open, good-natured look on his face matches the genuine tone of his voice.

The Doctor continues. "I've seen your Academy record. High honors all round, came first in astrophysics, A-grade interstellar navigation certificate." He tugs on one of his ears in an absent-minded sort of way. "At least on paper, you're really quite fantastic, Rose Tyler."

Rose nods, quietly accepting the odd half-compliment, before asking the question she's been wondering since the hangar bay. "That why I'm here, then? So you can see if I'm—" She smiles, tongue caught between her teeth. "—_fantastic?_"

"Um." The Doctor looks honestly tongue-tied for a moment, but he shakes himself out of it quickly. "Yes. Yes! Initiation, that's what this is. Break in the new crewmember, and all that. Nothing for it like an away mission."

"I've never been to another planet before." Rose says it quietly. It's almost a little embarrassing, that she made it through the Academy but she's never even left Earth, except for spacedock trips. "Never had the money, or the time really. Closest I've come to an away mission is that survival course they put you through at the Academy — you know, the one where they drop you off in the desert for a week?"

The Doctor nods sagely. "Ah, survival training." He taps on the co-pilot's console and brings up more planetary analysis readings. "Well, I doubt this'll be anything like that. Looks like our little planet here is very cold indeed. Plus, I'm not planning to make you eat snake meat, or drink your own sweat." He shudders. "_Eugh._"

Rose just laughs.

* * *

She brings the shuttle down at their assigned coordinates. It's a forest clearing of sorts, on the edge of a cliff overlooking a large valley. When Rory opens the shuttle door and brings out his tricorder, a burst of cold air rushes into the cabin, making the hairs on Rose's arms stand up. She grabs a jacket from the equipment locker before ducking out behind him and the Doctor.

The view outside the shuttle door is like nothing she's ever seen.

She'd known there was snow — or this planet's equivalent form of frozen precipitation, which may or may not actually be _snow_ — falling. It'd made the last few minutes of piloting to their landing site a bit annoying. Looking at it here, though, from the ground, she can't summon up any emotion other than wonder. It's _beautiful._ It must've started recently, because there's only a light covering on the ground, and on the blue-tinged trees and plants surrounding them. Out in the valley beyond the cliff there's a a veritable ocean of trees with deep blue leaves, all dusted with snow, like sugar shaken over an oddly colored cake.

Rose is so lost in the view that she doesn't even notice the Doctor come up beside her.

"So? First time on an alien planet, yeah? What do you think?"

"It's—" She takes a deep breath — lets the thin, cold air fill her lungs, relishes the unfamiliar icy sting, watches as her next breath comes out as warm fog in the air. "—it's _brilliant._"

"Bit early for a proper sunset, mind. But yeah." He turns and beams at her. "Brilliant."

Rose smiles back, face almost aching from the sheer amount of _smiling_ she's done in the last half-hour or so, and it's a perfect little crystallized moment — the softly falling snow, the muted hum of the shuttle idling behind them, the unfamiliar ground beneath her feet, the electronic whir of Rory's tricorder taking readings.

The smile on the Doctor's face, bright and blinding and directed at her.

Rose sort of wants to stay in it forever, wants to create a holoprogram that's just this moment on loop. It's lovely, this moment, and she can't travel in time, can't do this all over again, but she could re-create this moment after a fashion. She could revisit this memory, relive it somehow.

She tears her eyes from the Doctor's and looks out over the cliff, at the place where the purple sky bleeds into a frozen landscape dotted with blue vegetation. She sucks in another lungful of chilly air, and tells herself _just another second. Then I'll get to work._

Of course, that's when the arrow whizzes out of the cluster of trees to the west, and buries itself in Rory's chest.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor leaps into action immediately, jumping to catch Rory as he staggers backwards in shock, clutching at his chest and shouting _"Rory!"_

Rose is right behind the Doctor, running a few steps past him and towards the forested area that the arrow had flown from. There's no sign of life or movement that she can see — no shifting foliage or cracking twigs, no beady eyes peeking through the leaves. A cursory inspection of the closest trees and bushes doesn't reveal anything suspicious, either. It's almost as though the arrow came from nowhere, of its own volition. She's mulling over the wisdom of grabbing a phaser and a tricorder — just charging into the forest on her own for a more thorough investigation — when a loud groan from Rory draws her attention.

He's crumpled in a heap, sprawled half on the snowy ground and half in the Doctor's arms. One hand is grasping at the arrow, while the other spasms in pain at his side. Rose kneels down next to them and, on impulse, grabs at Rory's free hand. He seems grateful for the gesture, his fingers wrapping tight around hers in a surprisingly firm grip.

Upon closer inspection, it's clear that the arrow — if it can really be called an arrow — has lodged itself closer to Rory's shoulder than his chest. The offending object doesn't look primitive at all, despite what they've been told about the local population. It's a long, slender metal shaft, notched with softly glowing blue lines that look electronic, and the whole thing tapers into a fine, sharp point that's far too evenly crafted to be anything but machine-made. The end is sticking out of Rory's back, having gone straight through him an inch or so below his collarbone — thankfully, on the side of his chest where his heart isn't. He's still conscious, if shocked, and appears to be trying to calm himself with slow, wracked deep breaths.

Rose takes a moment to send up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever higher power may or may not be listening. Even though her medical training is only basic, she still knows that this could be much, _much_ worse.

That said, Rory is still in bad shape. There's a wet red stain quickly spreading across his shirt, turning the blue fabric a sickly dark shade of purple. "Is he going to be all right, Doctor?" Rory draws in another gasping breath, eyes slamming shut in pain as he clutches Rose's hand even tighter. "This…doesn't look good."

The Doctor brushes off her worry with a smile — a much tighter, more forced expression than the sunny smiles he's been giving her all day. "Of course! There are constants in the universe. Speed of light, presence of bananas on Villengard, Planck's appropriately named constant. And Rory's always _fine,_ that's a constant. Right, Rory?"

Rory opens his eyes with what appears to be great difficulty. He then takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and shoots the Doctor a grimace that somehow manages to convey deep and enduring frustration, despite his obvious pain. "Give. Me. My. Tricorder," he grates out, letting go of Rose's hand to make a grabbing gesture in the Doctor's direction.

The Doctor looks a bit miffed, but he roots around on the ground for the dropped medical tricorder and dutifully hands it to Rory.

Rose meets the Doctor's eyes over Rory's prone body. "So, what now? I think it's safe to say we're not exactly _welcome_ on this planet."

"You could say that." The Doctor looks around the clearing, lingering on the edge of the forest. "And I'm not sure we're dealing with anyone — or any_thing_ — 'pre-spaceflight', either. In fact—" He squints, and tugs an arm out from under Rory to gesture at part of the tree line. "—hang on a tick, was that bush there a second ago?"

The bush in question, which Rose is fairly certain was _not_ there when she'd examined the area just a moment ago, responds to their interest by beginning to _grow_ — upwards, very rapidly, until it no longer resembles a bush so much as it does a stocky, square-ish humanoid, thoroughly covered in leaves and in possession of a very large set of blue pointed teeth.

_Well, there's the much, much worse._

* * *

As predicted, it turns out that the locals aren't so much "pre-spaceflight" as they are "technologically advanced enough to fool the sensors on a Harmony-class starship" — not to mention "tetchy", "rude", and "isolationist to the point of insanity."

How exactly the Doctor's managed to wheedle this much information out of their captors as they're marched through the forest, Rose has no idea. She can't get a word out of the alien that's herding her along, which looks more like a willow tree than the bush the Doctor hasn't stopped blathering at since it appeared in the clearing.

The natives have, at least, helped with Rory's injury. The arrow-like projectile has been removed from his arm, replaced with a bandage made out of silvery, organic-looking material. The wound has stopped bleeding, but he still winces every time his "escort" — a squat creature that Rose would say resembles a sullen, overgrown rosebush, if rosebushes had bright green flowers and were capable of looking put-upon — nudges him along too forcefully.

Eventually, the towering sentient bush seems to tire of the Doctor's non-stop gob, and pushes him back toward Rose and her willowy friend. "Hello there!" he says brightly, nudging her shoulder with his and holding his hands — bound, like hers, with a sort of twisted brown rope that she thinks might actually be vine — up to wave awkwardly, without opening his hands. "They're a _fascinating_ bunch, these folks! Did you know that they consider all offworlders to be 'invasive species' with the potential to contaminate the bioecological balance of the planet?" He sniffs and makes a screwed-up, considering sort of face. "I mean, they could stand to be a bit more _pleasant_ about it, for sure, but you've got to admit there's some internal logical consistency there, considering they're all…plant-y."

Rose can't help it when a snort of amusement escapes her — he's just so irrepressibly _enthusiastic._ "I was actually _listening_ to you natter on, so yeah, I did know." She hazards a glance at the tree-like creature behind her, judges that it's far enough behind them to risk it, and whispers, "So how are we going to get out of here?"

"Ah, that?" The Doctor wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. "Don't worry about that. I've got everything we need right here." He indicates his hands by waving them back and forth.

"What do you mean? They've confiscated everything — our tricorders, our phasers, even the bloody shuttle!"

"Ah, but _this—_" The Doctor grins, and uses his thumbs to slide what looks like a small metal tube, topped with a dim blue bulb, out of his bound fists. "— is none of those things. It's a _screwdriver._" He looks far more pleased with himself than Rose thinks is probably warranted.

"And that's gonna help us _how?_" she whispers furiously.

He lowers his voice even further and fidgets with the small metal device. There's a soft electronic noise, and then suddenly the bulb starts to glow blue. "Remote distress signal, keyed to the biosignature of every off-ship crew member within the _TARDIS'_ transporter range. Means that as long as Oswald's paying attention up there in Transporter Room One, we should be up and away right about—"

The plant creatures are just beginning to notice the odd combination of whirring noises and blue light when Rose starts to feel the odd sensation of transport begin to crawl over her skin.

She catches a glimpse of the Doctor's grinning face, hears his slightly muffled voice crowing _"Now!"_, and then there's nothing but the disorienting white swirl of transporter energy as the forest fades from view.

* * *

The first thing Rose sees once they materialize on the _TARDIS_ is a dark-skinned woman in a medical uniform, rushing forward and onto the transporter platform in order to prop up Rory. He sags gratefully into the hold, croaking out, "Oh, but am I glad to see you, Martha."

The Doctor has managed to use his — _screwdriver?_ — to cut himself out of the vine-like bonds, and comes over to Rose to do the same for her. While he busies himself with the task, the medical officer — Martha — glares at him and asks, calmly but icily, "What the _hell_ happened down there?"

The Doctor doesn't answer, because as soon as the question escapes Martha's mouth the ship is rocked by a fierce tremor. It nearly throws them all to the ground, and as soon as the Doctor recovers he's sprinting out of the transporter room without a shouted _"Bridge! Sorry!"_

Rose gives Martha and Rory what she hopes is an apologetic look, then takes off after him.

The scene on the bridge is one of absolute chaos. There is a small fire being put out at the tactical station, and sparks are flying freely from a number of consoles. Rose can see at least three people with visible cuts and bruises.

"DONNA!" The Doctor's voice echoes across the bridge as he _leaps_ out of the turbolift, practically skidding across the upper level and vaulting over the metal railing behind the captain's chair, where Donna is seated. "What's going on?"

Before Donna has a chance to respond, a female voice, tinged with anger and a Scottish accent, cuts over the bridge comm channel._"DOCTOR!"_ Rose winces a bit at the sheer volume of the shout, which is considerable even over the comm frequency. _"What the __**hell**__ are you doing to my ship?!"_

The Doctor, apparently unfazed by the general state of emergency around him, scowls and responds petulantly over the channel. "Oi! I think you'll find that it's _my_ ship, Pond, and—"

_"Children!"_ Donna interjects into the argument, gritting her teeth and glaring at the Doctor. "Shields at thirty-six percent! Can this _wait_?"

The Doctor grimaces as a flurry of sparks explode from the console nearest the captain's chair, and his face sets into something hard, something Rose hasn't seen before, not even when Rory had been lying between them bleeding. "Right. Pond, what can you do about the shields?"

_"Not much, Doctor. We were barely through a primary systems check when you went down to the planet, and whatever energy weapons they're using are __**frying**__ the power cells, it's just—"_

_"Amy."_ The Doctor's voice is calm but firm, not chastising so much as encouraging. "You're not my chief of engineering for nothing. What can you _do?_"

There's a brief pause, then a sigh. _"I can get you maybe sixty percent if I divert some power from—"_ She's cut off by another resounding tremor. It rocks the whole bridge, and Rose finds herself scrabbling for something to grab onto — a railing, one of the wall roundels, _anything_. It doesn't really work — she ends up being thrown hard into the tactical console, and it's a minute before she can gather herself up enough to take stock of the situation again.

The Doctor is clutching onto the captain's chair, using it to keep himself upright as aftershocks run through the ship, and the bridge continues to shake. "Donna, what the hell's knocking us around?"

"They've got bloody _planetary defense cannons,_" Donna bites out, shoving an ensign aside as she maneuvers herself behind the ops console and starts fiddling with it. "I can modulate the shield frequencies to alleviate some of the damage, but it won't last long. They'll figure out what we're doing right quick, and it won't be hard to work around."

The chief engineer's voice comes back across the channel. _"Doctor, we're stuffed unless you can get us out of the line of fire. It doesn't have to be long — two minutes, three maybe — but I've got plasma conduits overloading all over the place, and even __**you**__ would need to be both upright and not on fire to get anything done down here."_

"Right." The Doctor nods towards the helmsman, looking grim. "Evasive maneuvers, then."

The officer sitting in the helmsman's chair is a young, harried-looking human man. Rose has been watching him since they came onto the bridge — watching him pilot _badly_, seeing him plot the evasive maneuvers all wrong, taking five steps to do things that only ought to take two. Before she's even realized what she's doing, she's made her way down off the upper level, past Donna and the Doctor and towards the pilot's station.

Rose insinuates herself next to the pilot and asks, brisk and to-the-point, "What's your name?"

The young man spares a glance at her, barely restrained panic shining in his eyes. "What? Mitchell — er, Adam, ma'am, this isn't really a good time—"

Rose cuts him off. "Right. Adam, you're rubbish at this. _Move._"

He gapes openly at her. "What? Excuse me, who _are_ you?"

She means to reply — with what, she honestly isn't sure — but the Doctor beats her to it.

"Adam, you're relieved." There's steel in his voice, and when Rose turns around to meet his eyes it's in them, too. His gaze is unwavering, hard, and ever so slightly questioning. Rose makes herself meet it with a steady look of her own, willing herself not to blink or flinch. "I'm assuming you have a plan?" he asks.

"You need three minutes of no-impact, yeah?" Rose allows herself a smug smile, because _this_ — she can _do_ this. "I'll give you five."

* * *

The next day, Rose is on her way to an early-morning duty shift — oh-six-hundred, _ugh_ — in astrometrics when she meets Donna in the turbolift.

The other woman has a bandage on her lower arm, covering the burn she'd gotten after the ops console caught fire the previous day. She doesn't look too bothered about it, though — the look on her face when she looks up to see Rose entering the lift is positively delighted. "Morning, Lieutenant!" she chirps. "Hell of a first day that was yesterday, huh?"

Rose still isn't sure how the Doctor parlayed her (successful, thank you very much) game of orbital chicken with a planetary defense grid into a fairly amicable cease-fire, but he did. The whole thing had turned out rather well, all things considered — if one didn't count the injuries and the damage to the ship and the near-disastrous first contact. "Yeah, you could say that." She laughs. "Could have done without the firefight, but I did get to fly."

Donna smiles. "Well, I'd say you'll be doing an awful lot of that from now on."

Rose had looked at her assignment schedule for the week before the debacle of yesterday — she'd been sure that there wasn't a proper bridge shift on it for at least a week. In fact, most of her assignments were in astrometrics, like the one this morning. "What do you mean?"

Donna looks a little surprised, but she doesn't stop smiling. "Didn't anyone tell you? As of today, you're senior staff. Chief helmsman. It ought to be reflected on the duty roster starting tomorrow."

Rose doesn't know what to say. In fact, she has a feeling she probably looks a little like a gaping fish right about now.

"Seems you made quite the impression on our fearless leader. Not bad, as first days go." Donna turns to look at Rose, winking impishly. "I'll see you at the senior officers' meeting, Tyler. Oh-eight-hundred. Don't be late."

The turbolift _dings_ softly as it reaches Deck Seven, and Donna exits with a jaunty little wave.

It isn't until the second time that the computer briskly asks her to _please state a destination_ that Rose manages to shake herself from the shock and ask for Deck Four.


	4. Chapter 4

The senior staff meeting is a bit intimidating, at first.

Rose gets to the briefing room on Deck Two fifteen minutes ahead of oh-eight-hundred, only to find that there's nobody there just yet. It's almost eerily quiet in the room – there's no sound except her own breathing and the gentle, omnipresent hum of a spaceship in flight.

She picks one of the chairs by the head of the long conference table, near the viewport that looks out on the stars outside, and wonders at how _fast_ all of this is happening. It's barely been twenty-four hours since she came aboard the TARDIS, and Rose has already been attacked and held prisoner by sentient vegetation, piloted a Harmony-class starship under battle conditions, and been promoted to a senior staff position that she'd imagined would take _years_ to work up to.

Her head is still spinning a bit when Donna strolls into the room a few minutes later, trailed by a pretty, dark-skinned woman – the "Martha" who'd met them in the transporter room the day before. The other woman introduces herself as Dr. Jones, chief medical officer, and gives her a firm handshake and a genuine smile. Rose likes her immediately.

The rest of the senior officers drift in steadily over the next few minutes, and for the most part they're all just as friendly as Martha. Lt. Commander McShane is a bit…_intense_, but Rose imagines tactical officers sort of have to be. Lieutenant Pond – chief of engineering, and the owner of the angry Scottish voice she'd heard over the comm channel on the bridge – acts as though they're already best mates. She pulls up a chair right beside Rose at the briefing table, and says, with mock seriousness, "I'm Amy. Welcome to hell."

On the other side of the briefing table, Donna snickers.

* * *

Rose had imagined that the promotion meant she wouldn't get much time away from the ship – that she'd be on the bridge most of the time, observing away missions from a distance, hearing about them secondhand at briefings. She'd been a little sad about that. Flying is _brilliant_, and she wouldn't trade that seat at the very front of the bridge for anything, but standing there on that alien planet, next to the Doctor, with the snow falling around them–

Well, that had been brilliant too.

It turns out that Rose needn't have worried too much, though. She's still on the bridge most of the time, as she's responsible for the bulk of navigation and maneuvers. But whenever they happen upon an interesting planet or nebula or random bit of space junk, the Doctor seems to want her along for the ride. He's always dragging her away from the helm, leaving whoever's on co-piloting duty to maintain the ship's orbit.

The Doctor himself _never_ seems to miss an away mission. It's highly irregular, really, for the captain to spend as much time off-ship as he does. Rose is fairly certain that Donna logs more time as the ranking officer on the bridge than the Doctor ever does – though he always seem to be there when Rose is, sprawled in the command seat while he reads through daily operations reports, or while he bickers with Donna about whether or not a captain's log is something he actually needs to keep.

Rose asks him about it once, quite early on. It's maybe a month or so into the tour, on the latest of a string of away missions which have just been her and the Doctor, getting into improbable scrapes in impossible places and somehow always coming out on top.

"So why am I here, exactly? Here, and not, I don't know, flying the ship?" Rose asks, a bit irritably, from a crouched position behind a rock formation somewhere on the surface of Erronos V. There are twigs in her hair and her knees are scraped up quite badly, and she's really got no idea why it was so vital for _her_ to be down here with the slavering, homicidal inhabitants of this decidedly _not_ civilized planet.

The Doctor looks at her with genuine confusion. "Because you're–" The sound of feet crunching on loose rocks distracts them both, for a moment, before it quiets and he turns back to her. "You're _brilliant_ at this – the running, and the daft shuttle piloting, and the first contacts. You notice things. Like the fact that the readings in the temple were so strange, earlier. We'd be dead if you hadn't noticed that." Suddenly, the Doctor seems very interested in his sonic screwdriver, staring very determinedly at it – and not her – as he continues. "You're – you're _Rose._"

Then the gentle sound of rocks shifting under feet becomes harsher. Their pursuers are _running_ now, and conversation falls by the wayside as they take off in an attempt to outpace them.

Rose means to bring it up again, later. She means to push about what exactly he meant, means to make him look her in the eyes while he says it. But there's angry Nellosians and a little bit of phaser fire and a really outrageous amount of running, and by the time they're back on the ship, breathing heavily and clinging to each other for support on the transporter pad, she's lost her nerve.

The days start to bleed into each other, not because they're boring, but rather because they never run out of things to _do._ There's always something new to see, somewhere new to go, some new course to plot and some new thing to run from – or _towards_ – and suddenly four months have already passed, and five years doesn't seem like nearly enough time to be out here.

Rose wants to keep doing this _forever._

* * *

It's fairly quiet in the mess hall, today. Apart from Rose and her lunch date, there are only a dozen or so other people around, and she's quite content to just sit and enjoy the quiet. Always having something to do is brilliant, to be sure, but it's still good to have a moment to herself, now and then. It's nice to be able to just relax with her chips and her cup of tea and her datapad and bask in the calm that will inevitably be shattered sometime soon – by an attack, or an away mission, or a call from the Doctor saying _Rose, you __have__ to come see this._

Then Amy speaks up.

"So, you and the Doctor," Amy says indelicately, around a mouthful of replicated potato. "What's that like?"

Rose is only half paying attention, immersed in the results of a test she'd run on the last away mission, and Amy's words mostly go in one ear and out the other. "What's what like?"

Amy rolls her eyes. "Oh, _come on,_ I promise I won't blab to anyone. I'm _dying_ to know, though." She waves her fork animatedly, then spears another chip with it. "I mean, it's the _Doctor."_

Rose gapes at her, for a moment, before spluttering, "We're not like that!" It comes out a bit louder than she intended, and a few heads turn towards their table. Rose flushes a bit and squirms in her seat, fixing her eyes back on the datapad and willing herself to look engrossed.

Amy looks altogether unconvinced. "Right. And I'm Vulcan," she says dryly, through another bite.

Rose looks at her sharply. "I'm serious, Amy. We're not like that at all. We're just– "

She stops, because she'd been about to say _friends_, but she's not quite certain that it's true.

No. That's not right. Rose knows they're friends. There isn't anyone on the ship that she spends more time with. They're _constantly_ on away missions together. Even when they're not he's still just a few feet behind her, making wisecracks about her driving from the captain's chair – or making himself at home on the desk she still occasionally occupies in astrometrics, leaning up against it while she tries to plot a navigation chart, or sitting across from her just like Amy's doing now, chattering amiably while Rose eats her chips and chatters right back.

They're definitely friends. What she doesn't know is if they're _more_ than friends.

Amy doesn't give her time to finish thinking, offering up her own opinion instead. "Inseparable? Insufferable? Arse-over-elbows in love?" she says impishly.

Rose drops her head to the table with a _thunk._

"He's the _captain,_ Amy," she mumbles miserably, into the metal tabletop.

"There, there." Amy pats Rose's head in mock sympathy. "Why should that stop you? You're both consenting adults, both senior staff, and it's not like there aren't any…_liaisons_ already going on here on the good ship TARDIS." Rose looks up just in time to see Amy wiggle her eyebrows suggestively. "There's me and Rory, but you know that. Ian and Barbara, in the science division, they've been carrying on for _ages._ And I know for a _fact_ that one of my ensigns is sleeping with that pretty brunette transporter technician." Amy shrugs. "Even if he is the captain, it's not technically against regulations."

Rose slowly heaves herself back up, attempting to regain some of her composure. "I don't even think he'd be interested."

Amy barely has time to snort in disbelief before Rose's combadge beeps softly, followed by the Doctor's voice, tinny and electronic over the comm channel. _"Rose! Need you in Transporter Room One! We've got a planet to visit!"_

Rose groans. Amy laughs.

* * *

The away mission is to another M-class planet – Urraka, it's called.

This one, though, has no snow and no sentient plant life. In fact, it's about as different from her first experience on an alien planet as possible. The landscape is barren and vaguely desert-like, covered with oddly-shaped rock formations in vibrant shades of red and orange. It reminds Rose a little of the wildly inaccurate depictions of Mars she'd seen in Mickey's comic books, back when they were kids.

The locals here also appear to be much friendlier than the walking, talking bushes of the planet they'd later learned was called Alloxis IV. They're humanoid, with disconcertingly translucent skin, a very basic grasp of spaceflight technology, and a magpie-like approach to life. Their houses and cities are a hodgepodge of scavenged tech and architecture from across the quadrant. Rose recognizes computer parts from Mira Six in the capital city's mainframe, and can tell that the entire central aqueduct system appears to have been lifted from the colony worlds of Kyrrock.

The home of the local magistrate, who has agreed to stand as a representative in the negotiation of terms for peaceful passage through this sector, is so full to bursting of collected bits and bobs that it feels like a museum. There are artifacts and bits of technology closed up in glass display cases all over the central hall, where they've been left to wait, and the walls are lined with shelves full of loose items. There's also a thin layer of gritty dust over the whole place that makes it smell earthy and a bit like a tomb. Rose can't quite tell if that's just a quirk of this planetary environment, or if no one ever actually _touches_ any of the salvage piled up here – if they just collect it and catalogue it and stow it away.

Regardless of which it is, the Doctor is in heaven.

"Rose! Look at this!" The Doctor's voice comes from across the central hall. He's plastered against one of the glass display cases, studying the piece of tech within while gesturing for Rose to come over. "It's a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator!"

Rose rolls her eyes and makes her way over to him. "I understood maybe two of those words, and I got _very_ good grades in my engineering courses."

The Doctor has pulled a pair of glasses out of one of his trouser pockets and moved around to the other side of the case, examining the item inside with rapt fascination. "It's _marvelous_, really. Absolutely _gorgeous_ technology."

Rose smiles at his obvious enthusiasm. "Care to inform the rest of the class what it does?"

The Doctor has just opened his mouth to answer her when the sound of a throat being cleared pre-empts him. They both turn, towards the archway that leads from the hall into the rest of the house, to see a smartly dressed Urrakan (the magistrate, Rose assumes) standing there and eyeing them appraisingly.

Rose doesn't care for the way he looks at her and the Doctor – sizing them up, as though they're objects he might be able to acquire for his little collection of artifacts here, like butterflies pinned to a card and hung up on the wall.

"Does he sort of give you the shivers?" she asks the Doctor quietly, as they're following the magistrate through the corridors off the main hall, presumably to wherever the negotiations will take place.

The Doctor considers, for a moment, before saying "Nah. He's just a little – odd. That's it. Odd. There's lots of people who're odd but not – off. Like me. Right? Odd but not off. Pretty sure I've heard myself described that way."

Rose just smiles at him and doesn't answer.

"Right, Rose? Right?"

* * *

Twenty minutes later, when they're unceremoniously tossed into a small, dark room, Rose refrains from saying _I told you so._

"Oi!" The Doctor shouts at the closed door behind them. He gives it a sound kick before wincing and yelling again. "What's all this for? If you wanted something, you could've just _said!_ No need for all this prisoner nonsense!"

While the Doctor shouts at the door that isn't likely to shout back, Rose starts trying to parse out how big this room is, and whether there's any means of escape. Her hands find a wall in the dark, and she drags them along the hard rock surface until coming across something metal. It's a control panel of some kind, and fiddling with the knobs and dials brings up a bit more light in the room – harsh, fluorescent light, but light all the same.

She's about to tell the Doctor to stop abusing the door and come help her accomplish something when another voice, electronic and stuttering, croaks out his name instead. It splits it into two hard syllables, spit angrily out into the air, and Rose can see the Doctor go absolutely, completely still at the sound.

_**"DOC–TOR."**_

The Doctor turns, slowly, and Rose can see that all of the color has drained out of his face. The flush and excitement of their latest adventure has been replaced with something else – something she's never really seen in him before, not once in all the months they've been narrowly avoiding danger, skirting around near-death experiences once before breakfast and twice before lunch.

_Fear._


	5. Chapter 5

_"DOC-TOR."_

The voice is like nothing Rose has ever heard before. It's electronic, like the voice of the _TARDIS'_ computer, though there's really no resemblance beyond that most basic fact. The voice of the ship is gentle and distinctly feminine, soft and friendly, with only a slight clipped undertone to indicate that it is not, in fact, the voice of a real person.

That, of course, doesn't stop the Doctor from speaking to the computer as if it _were_ a real person. Rose can't count the number of times she's walked into the turbolift or onto the bridge to find the Doctor engaged in an utterly pointless argument with the computer over something or other, like the number of Jefferies tubes on board or the personnel capacity of Deck Six. The computer is a fairly advanced artificial intelligence, but it can't really carry on a conversation. It can only regurgitate facts and pose solutions to problems in accordance with preprogrammed subroutines. Still, the Doctor engages it like it's an individual, a person – as though maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can get it to say _hello, Doctor_ instead of _yes, Captain._

But there's nothing of the ship's soft, helpful tone in this voice, in this unnervingly mechanical rendition of the Doctor's name.

The Doctor is still standing frozen near the door, staring in the direction of the harsh electronic sound, his face a mask of dumbstruck horror. "No." He shakes his head and says it one more time, as though he can change their situation just by refusing to accept it. _"No."_

For the first time since the lights came up, Rose can get a good look at the thing the voice is coming from. It looks – well, if she's honest, it looks a lot like an oversized pepperpot. A huge, beat-down pepperpot made of rusty metal, studded with dull brass-colored roundels that remind her a bit of the ones set into the walls of the bridge. There are two long appendages protruding from it about halfway up, one of which looks like it might be a gun and the other of which distinctly resembles a plunger, of all the absurd things. It also looks like it's being restrained, situated in a circle of metal pylons and bound up with chains.

The most unnerving thing, however, is the eyestalk. It extends from what Rose assumes is the creature's head, and ends in a glowing blue bulb that is focused – with a truly disconcerting degree of intensity – on the Doctor.

The Doctor, for his part, seems just as focused on the strange metal creature as it is on him. For a few beats, there is absolute silence between the two of them as one blue eye connects with two brown eyes, holding a staring contest that Rose can't even begin to understand the context of.

Then the thing grates out a new word in its hard-edged voice.

"EX-TER-MI-NATE."

The Doctor moves away from the door with inhuman speed, practically _leaping_ from it to where Rose is standing as he places himself squarely between her and the angry-sounding pepperpot. He's facing it, not her, and from her place behind him Rose can see tension seizing up his shoulders, as though he's bracing for something to hit him.

Nothing does, though. One of the metal creature's lower appendages – the one that resembles a gun, not a plunger – twitches in their direction, but absolutely nothing happens.

Then the Doctor _laughs._

It's a terrifying sound – one Rose finds infinitely more frightening than the harsh voice of the metal monster they're facing down, even as she's quite certain that said monster just tried to kill them.

The Doctor's laugh is _manic_, almost hysterical, with a savage quality that is altogether unfamiliar and deeply unsettling. "Oh, that's _brilliant,_" he bites out, viciously. "You're powerless, aren't you? The great space dustbin." Apparently feeling empowered by its powerlessness, the Doctor takes a step towards the creature. "How do you like that? Not being able to touch me? Not being able to _kill_ me?" If possible, his voice goes even lower, even darker. "If you can't kill, then what's the point of you, eh? What's the point of you, _Dalek_?"

"STAY BACK," the thing – the Dalek – orders. "YOU WILL KEEP BACK."

"Or what?" The Doctor is practically gloating now. "You'll _exterminate_ me? Hmm?" He pauses for a moment before asking, "What are you doing here, anyways?"

"ORDERS," the Dalek responds. "I WAIT FOR ORDERS."

"You won't be getting any," the Doctor says flatly. "No one to give them."

"I MUST HAVE ORDERS."

"Doctor?" Rose tries to interject, as she figures that she ought to be let in on the context of this conversation at some point. The Doctor, however, doesn't even seem to register that she's spoken.

"There aren't any orders coming. There never will be." His voice is more than flat now – it's hollow. "They're all dead. All of you."

"IMPOSSIBLE."

"Not impossible. Just improbable." The Doctor laughs again, but all the fury of earlier has bled out of it. It's a sad, humorless sound that makes Rose want to reach for his hand and hold on as tight as she can. "I should know. I saw it happen. I _made_ it happen."

Rose is about to try interjecting again when the door to the cell bangs open and the magistrate walks in, flanked by two guards. The noise seems to snap the Doctor out of his confrontation in a way that Rose's voice couldn't, and he whirls around to face their captors.

What he says isn't what she's expecting, though.

"Get out," he growls, shooting a venomous glare at the magistrate. "I don't know what you think you're playing at, keeping this _thing_ here, or throwing us in here with it, but right now you're going to take Rose and you're going to _get out._"

Oh, but Rose isn't having any of that. "Doctor–" she starts, but he cuts her off without even looking at her, instead advancing on the magistrate with fire in his eyes. ""What the _hell_ were you thinking?" he grinds out. "Do you have _any_ idea what that thing is? What it's capable of?"

"I was rather hoping you'd tell me, Doctor," the magistrate says coolly.

"And you couldn't just _ask_, hmmm? You had to throw us in a cell with the psychopathic dustbin and see what happened?"

The other man shrugs indifferently. "Call it curiosity. And it got me what I wanted, didn't it?" He walks around the Doctor, who lunges to stop him before he's caught and hauled backwards by one of the guards. Rose's aborted move towards the Doctor is met with the same treatment, and she finds herself hauled back against one of the hulking Urrakan men.

Then the magistrate begins addressing the Dalek, but Rose doesn't catch what's said, because the guards are pulling her and the Doctor out the door.

They're only held in the corridor for a few minutes before the magistrate emerges from the room, his face thunderous. "It won't speak to me." He rounds on the Doctor. "Why won't it speak to me?"

The Doctor ignores his question. "Magistrate, that thing is _awake_, and it's recognized me, and I could not possibly be more serious when I tell you that as long as it's alive, there is no one in this city – on this _planet_ – that is safe."

The magistrate sniffs in disbelief. "I hardly think so. We've got it restrained, and have done for quite some time now." He turns his unnervingly orange-colored eyes towards the Doctor. "However, I find myself quite a bit more interested in _you_ now, Doctor. I think that a bit of a…_chat_ is in order."

The Doctor doesn't struggle; instead, he settles for a withering glare.

Then the magistrate says, "Throw the girl back in the cell."

There's blood-chilling panic in the Doctor's voice as he shouts "No, _Rose_, no, _don't_–"

But no matter how much he struggles, there's no way and no time for him to do anything before she's unceremoniously shoved back into the cell, left to stare helplessly at the thick metal door as it swings shut.

* * *

It's a minute or two before Rose works up the courage to turn around and face the Dalek.

Despite the Doctor's panic, the Dalek isn't making any move to hurt her. It's just…_sitting_ there, staring at her through the glowing blue lens at the end of its eyestalk.

Part of her wants to take Doctor's word for it, wants to just take it on faith that this thing is dangerous and that she ought to be frightened. In fact, it's a _big_ part, if she's quite honest, because in all the months she's been on the _TARDIS_, she has _never_ seen the Doctor quite as unbalanced as he'd been for the last ten minutes, and that's worrying, it really is.

But the part of her that's a Starfleet Academy graduate, the part of her that loves this gold uniform more than anything else she's ever worn, the _Lieutenant Rose Tyler_ part of her, manages to quash the worry and the panic and channel it into internal recitations of the Prime Directive and first contact protocols like _"before engaging alien species in battle, any and all attempts to make first contact and achieve nonmilitary resolution must be made."_

She couldn't engage in battle even if she wanted to. The Urrakans confiscated their tricorders and her phaser and the Doctor's screwdriver ages ago, and Rose has a sinking feeling that she's woefully uninformed about what exactly is going on here. But she has to do _something_.

Rose talks to the Dalek – asks if it's in pain, if she can help, if there's anything she can do – and she doesn't really understand its responses, but it sounds _hurt_, maybe dying, its harsh voice fluctuating in volume as it asks, "DO YOU FEAR ME?"

Rose says _no_, and means it.

Then she touches the Dalek, and her palm-print glows like a fresh burn on its metal casing.

* * *

She learns – much too late, of course – that touching the Dalek was a mistake.

It herds her along the corridors of the bunker until they reach the main hall, where she and the Doctor had stood and examined artifacts just hours earlier. It smells more like smoke than dust now, though it's so much more a tomb now than it was before.

There is a skylight in the roof of the hall, and the Dalek seems absolutely fascinated by it. Rose, in turn, is more than a little fascinated by the revelation of what is inside the massive metal casing – a tiny, tentacled creature with one milky eye, staring transfixed at the light of Urraka's twin suns streaking down through the glass.

It's the sound of a gun being cocked, loud and echoing in the cavernous space of the hall, that rips her eyes away from the Dalek.

The Doctor – the _Doctor_, who won't even carry a phaser, even one that's locked to stun, who Rose has seen face down whole platoons of armed soldiers with nothing but his ridiculous screwdriver and a smile – is standing in the doorway behind them, holding a gun.

And he's pointing it at her.

"Get out of the way, Rose." His voice is tight with rage, and it sends a chill straight down Rose's spine. This is nothing like the hysterical fury of earlier. It's controlled, focused, the anger of a man who's made a decision and intends to carry through with it.

"No." She's proud of how sure her voice sounds, even as she has to curl her hands into fists so that they'll stop shaking. "No, I won't let you do this."

The Doctor speaks through gritted teeth. "Do you know _how many_ people that thing's killed today? I thought it had–" He takes in a shallow breath, then shakes his head as if to clear it and readjusts his hold on the gun. "I've got to do this, Rose. I've got to end it."

The words sound sure, but his voice doesn't – it cracks and breaks and when he finally looks her in the eye, he lowers the gun.

Behind her, the Dalek asks for permission to die.

* * *

Donna meets them in the transporter room, and there's hardly time for the odd, prickling sensation of transport to fade before she's demanding an explanation for why they dropped out of contact on Urraka.

The Doctor doesn't even spare her a glance – just stalks right off the transporter pad, past a very confused-looking Ensign Oswald and through the door into the corridor.

"Well?" Donna looks to Rose for the explanation the Doctor didn't give. "Do _you_ want to let me in why you dropped out of comm and transporter range for three hours?" Rose winces, because Donna sounds equal parts annoyed and genuinely concerned, a bit like her mum asking _and where do you think you were, out two hours past curfew without so much as a by-your-leave?_

"Captured, underground bunker, shielding all over the place. I'll write a report, Donna, I promise, but–" She gestures after the Doctor. "Can I just – the Doctor–"

Donna huffs in frustration, but cocks her head in the direction of the door. "Go on. But _one_ of you is going to tell me what happened down there." She narrows her eyes in warning. _"Soon."_

Rose nods in thanks and then hurries out the door and into the corridor, where she catches a glimpse of the Doctor's command-gold uniform disappearing into the turbolift. It's too late to catch him before the doors close, but as soon as she gets in on her own, it's just a matter of asking the computer to locate him.

The computer informs her, in that soothing, feminine voice, that _the captain is in his ready room._ So Rose makes her way to Deck One, endures a few quizzical stares from the bridge crew as she crosses the deck on her way to the Doctor's ready room, and doesn't bother sending a ping asking for permission to enter.

This room shows its age, just like the rest of the ship. In appearance, it most closely resembles the bridge itself, with well-worn metal floors and walls. There are rugs covering the hard metal flooring here, though, and a thoroughly unprofessional clutter scattered around the space. There are empty teacups on the Doctor's desk, open books and abandoned datapads strewn across the couches and chairs, and bits of engineering detritus on the shelves. Rose likes it, though. She (well, _they_, really) spend a lot of time in this room – collaborating on reports after away missions, going over astrogation charts, taking their shift breaks together on bridge duty.

Having a cuppa together when Rose is off-duty, just…because.

When she walks in, the room is dark, and the Doctor is standing by the room's one viewport, his back to her while he looks out into the blue-blackness of space. He hasn't brought the lights up, for whatever reason, so the only light in the room comes from the viewport – and the sight of space and the stars and Urraka from orbit, though beautiful, doesn't provide much light. Rose is about to ask the computer to bring up the lights when the Doctor's voice cuts through the silence.

"I'm sorry," he says – very quietly, and without turning to look at her.

Rose crosses the room to stand beside him, and chances a look at his profile, dimly illuminated in the starlight, before looking out through the viewport as well. "It's all right, Doctor."

"No, it isn't." His voice is fierce, and he finally turns to look at her. His eyes are shining with something more than reflected light. Maybe tears, maybe anger; Rose has a feeling that there's a whole lot of overlap between those two extremes in the Doctor's head at the moment.

She just doesn't know _why._

The Doctor scrubs a hand over his eyes and takes in a deep, shaky breath – maybe it is tears, then – before shuffling away from the viewport and towards his desk. He taps on the console there, which up till now had been sitting dim and inactive, and murmurs, "Authorization code Doctor-Pi-Alpha."

The console lights up, and the Doctor looks towards her before speaking. "Have you ever heard of a planet called Gallifrey?"


End file.
